WordPress will try to use the most specific file for each request, if it exists. In the WordPress templating system, there’s a hierarchy of template files that WordPress will try to use for each request. This way, we adhere to the DRY principle, and don’t repeat the code in all those files. These files are then required from the template files that we explained. comments.php will be used to display comments wherever applicable. For example, the header and footer are usually consistent across all pages on a website, so WordPress themes separate these page parts into header.php and footer.php. Partials files encapsulate repeatable parts of pages in WordPress website. page.php will specify how to display individual pages, and so on.

front-page.php, home.php, page.php, taxonomy.php, author.php, archive.php are some of the templates that we can use in our themes to further structure specific pages or queries in our theme.įor example, the archive.php file will specify the HTML output structure when a visitor requests some of the pages that display list of posts. The minimum index.php file catches all the queries that don’t have their respective specialized template files within a theme. This is the technical minimum required for the theme to function, but no serious WordPress theme stays with only these two files. The files that every WordPress theme must have - at the minimum - are style.css and index.php.

These instructions are encapsulated in WordPress themes.Įach theme consist of a folder with PHP, CSS, and sometimes JavaScript files. The role of the templating engine of WordPress is to enable us to write (primarily) presentational instructions - instructions on how exactly to structure and style the HTML content that WordPress will output. A PHP interpreter uses these files to produce web pages to web visitors. WordPress is basically just a bunch of PHP files that work together as an application. WordPress is a PHP-powered web application that uses MySQL as its database, and is usually run behind a server program, such as NGINX or Apache. Ever since then, its user base hasn’t stopped growing. It was initially released in 2003, by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress was conceived as a blog engine, or a simple, blogging-oriented content management system.

Create a wordpress theme 2017